Many of us carry heavy burdens around that are not readily apparent—burdens of shame, guilt, self-hatred, judgment, mistrust, and disbelief. The burden that we aren’t enough, that we won’t ever be. The burden that we aren’t working enough, being productive enough, using our time wisely, doing enough, for ourselves, for others, for our communities. The burden of chronic pain, challenging health conditions or illness. The collective traumas of institutionalized racism, institutionalized violence, ableism, heteronormativity, capitalism, and the patriarchy are damaging to all of us beyond words or explanation. While our experiences with such differ and are not the same, all of us are affected.

When suffering consists of others hate, of ancestral baggage, it is not ours. When we’ve been told by twisted, damaged people around us that we are a failure, that we aren’t worthy, it is very difficult to refuse these claims, but we must.

The majority of our burdens, pain, and suffering are no longer ours to carry. The price has gotten far too costly.

Last year I did a releasing ritual that involved taking people’s fears and burning and burying them. Participants had written their individual limiting thoughts on pieces of paper during a workshop. As the workshop was on the Full Moon, I waited until the Dark Moon to do the ritual. I lit white and black candles, and covered my altar in smoky quartz, clear quartz, and tourmaline. While I burned the papers down into ash, I sang a banishing spell I had made up. The remnants were covered in a salt and rosemary mixture.

Taking time to release my own burdens out of my body, I began sobbing. It felt like there was a chorus of different people wailing inside of me. Indeed, the feelings I was releasing were of a group. They weren’t all mine. After the grief rolled out of my body, there was a soft calmness. I walked to a large tree in a quiet park. Under the Dark Moon, the ashes of pain were buried into a hole in the earth.

The majority of our burdens, pain and suffering are no longer ours to carry.
And yet, we still keep choosing to be weighted down. They tamp us into flatness, distract us, leave us less than. Our experiences become confined.

The Tarot card that most illustrates this phenomenon is the 9 of Swords. This card illustrates taking on the pain of the past, of others’ pain, chaos, and trauma. It is a dark night of the soul, riddled with anxiety, fear, and guilt. The swords hanging over the sobbing person’s head are the subconscious collective’s anguish. They could be the behavior of an abusive person, the comments of internet trolls, or other people’s grief around you that bleeds over into your psyche. This card suggests that work must be done around boundaries, self-love, and unconscious patterning.

It is time to tear off this psychic scarlet letter; you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t know any better. It’s not your fault you were bullied, that your child self had insults hurled at you by adults.

You weren’t asking for it. You are undeserving of shame and hatred. It is a challenging task to do this, but it is imperative to dismantle damaging internal weights while working with manifestation and magic.

The majority of our burdens, pain and suffering are no longer ours to carry.
(I say this with deep compassion, as a survivor of various physical and mental assaults and abuse.) Of course, if you suffer from chronic depression or other mental health issues, I encourage you to seek professional help, therapy, or committing to a healing modality that resonates with you.

If thought patterns or internalized self-hatred are what you must work on, breath work, cognitive behavior therapy, EMDR therapy, meditation, forgiveness work, and journaling are all helpful practices. Tinctures like gorse and Star of Bethlehem are useful for supplemental energetic aid.

Where in your life are you choosing to carry pain and suffering that does not belong to you?

How are you working on releasing this?

Where is your inner saboteur, and how does that relate to unkind messages you’ve internalized?